What The Hell Is Wrong With Mass Effect Andromeda Anyways?

I’ve owned Mass Effect Andromeda on PC since it’s launch. Early on, I had a hard time getting into the game. This is probably not hard to believe given the games reception. It suffered from extreme backlash, most notably against it’s facial animations. I also was playing it in a rather disjointed manner and kept going on and off from it. Between playing Breath of the Wild at the time and jumping between several indie games for review, I couldn’t find time to really devote to the behemoth known as Andromeda.

At first I felt, this was a problem with Mass Effect Andromeda. Despite having stellar combat and gameplay, the rest of the game felt off to say the least. The quests felt filler, the story was meh, the characters were so so, the dialogue was cringe worthy. The list could really go on. But the further I played the game, I did find there to be some appeal in it’s main story. Even though it wasn’t the smoothest journey, I did have an itch to finish it, even if it was just for bragging rights, and for my financial investment alone. In recent events however, through the wonders of Origins on PC, some weird syncing between some PCs caused me to lose a 20 hour save I had in the works. Needless to say, I was pretty crushed at having to start this all over again.

I contemplated whether or not to abandon the game altogether. This was not a hard conclusion to consider, given how much hate surrounds the game and how I briefly shared this sentiment. It seemed justified, but on the flip side, I’ve read and listened to a few compelling arguments of why Mass Effect Andromeda really isn’t that bad. Given the none stop struggles the game had to go through during it’s creation, it’s quite a miracle it even exists.

Well I’m here to say, I’ve been converted, or since we’re talking about Mass Effect Andromeda, I’ve been exalted. Restarting my save has been a pretty pleasing experience thus far, and I can’t quite pinpoint why. I’m playing this time as male Ryder instead of the female counter part as I feel he represents me more closely. Perhaps I wasn’t a fan of the female Ryder’s voice and dialogue? There are some things she said that kind of made me shake my head at times, but then again, there are those moments with male Ryder to, although I don’t find it as bad.

I initially approached Mass Effect Andromeda as female Ryder in hopes it would provide a different experience than what I’m normally used to. Being a story driven game, I thought there would be certain things unique to each gender. Maybe you would deal with different situations differently, but I didn’t find that to be the case. I think this is the same situation for the original games as well. It might have been hopeful thinking, given programming what I was looking would be been quite the ordeal.

Meet… Zane Ryder

It’s possible I’m enjoying it more because I’m playing well away from it’s release window. There was way too much negative energy surrounding the game at the time, it made it hard justifying playing Mass Effect Andromeda worth my time. I normally don’t see myself as someone who is impacted by the media’s and Internets perception of things, but perhaps it subconsciously effected me somehow.

But I seem to have found a new sense of discovery for it this time around, and I’m glad I didn’t decide to abandon the game altogether. Suddenly, the main plight of the Andromeda initiative has more weight to it. The classes, abilities and upgrade system seems to make so much more sense this time to. The crew of the Tempest just seem that much more compelling now. I am so much more interested in who Ryder’s love interest will end up being. I can’t pinpoint who it should be at this moment, as there are things I like about all the characters.

Overall, for lack of better words, I’m giving a much bigger fuck this time around. Even before I’ve finished the game and knowing what happens at the end, I already feel a bit down that the series is on ice at the moment. From what I’ve seen and know about the story, it’s pretty good and there’s quite a bit I am liking. Knowing what I know already and what I’ve seen from my previous file, there’s some neat things that can develop from there and I’m excited to see what’ll happen.

And with this new found excitement, comes many breathtaking sights…

Let’s not sugar coat this too much though and be real for a sec. There are things about Andromeda that aren’t good. Having too many filler quests is indeed a problem. There are quite a few quests that just have you going from check point to check point all the time. There is that cringe worthy dialogue as well. Although I think the facial animation thing was blown way out of proportion, my Ryder has made some funny faces during emotional moments that just took away the feels. However I’m seeing alot more positive than negative this time, and that’s what counts.

I can’t wait to keep getting deeper into Andromeda, and putting the time into making my Ryder a complete powerhouse. There definitely seems to be alot more potential this time around, and that alone has me very excited. I’m pretty motivated to finish the game within the next couple of months.

What are your thoughts of Mass Effect Andromeda? Are you a late bloomer with the game like me? Do you think playing the game well after release has done it some good? Let’s get chatting using our Omni-tools!

12 thoughts on “What The Hell Is Wrong With Mass Effect Andromeda Anyways?”

I haven’t really played any of the Mass Effect games, but I’ve heard this one is pretty polarizing – even among fans. Then again, I wonder how much of that is due to negative energy from how Mass Effect 3 ended. I’ve remarked in the past that critics overhyping AAA releases makes it difficult to assess a game’s quality without playing it, but if the fans are determined to hate a game without having made it to the end, they’re not so different.

Yea I never considered the whole ME3 ending debacle when approaching Andromeda. Not sure if that had an impact, but would be interesting to know.

The game was definately very hyped, but approaching its release, people seemed weary at times. So it’s like the game was knocked for high expectations by people who expected for it to not live up. It’s a very weird situation I think. For a time it seemed like it was the cool thing to do to hate me andromeda.

I loved the original ME trilogy 🙂 Alas streaming the first hour of Andromeda really put me off buying it due to the story. I may pick it up on the cheap at some point though 🙂 I know Athena really likes it.

Yea I think the first hour is weak. Some advice Drakulus gave if you follow him. Do everything in your power to get off the first planet, that being EoS. After that I felt the game really opens up. Even coming back to EoS, it just feels dull.

I’m glad to hear that you’ve found a new lease of life with this game – I finished it a while ago but I have to say that I don’t have any intention of picking it back up again. Maybe I should give it another chance in future!

Did you enjoy it with your initial play through? Even though I’m not done, I don’t see this being a game I would play again. Due to the lack of good vs evil choices, I can’t see there being much variety in the choices I make. I see this being the case given as much as I loved the original trilogy, I never played those either.

Yay! Someone else who doesn’t hate Andromeda! I have to admit, playing it further from the hype (and further from the insanity that ensued on the internet) made the entire experience a lot more enjoyable for me. It still has some bloat problems, but I liked the story and really enjoyed the characters – I’d honestly expect nothing less from a BioWare game, in that regard.

yup, I’m kind of feeling this could have been in my top games from last year, but alas I didn’t give it a proper chance until this year. That doesn’t mean it can’t be on my list of favourite games of 2018 that didn’t release in 2018.

I’ve mentioned it before on Twitter, but a podcast buddy of mine encouraged me to give Andromeda a 2nd chance after being turned off at launch. It definitely felt weird that the first “bad” game I played in 2017 was an entry in the Mass Effect series, and if I went back in time and told myself that I don’t think I’d believe it. It didn’t run very well at launch on PS4, characters and their animations/lip-synching didn’t match the narrative’s delivery, and the opening hours were pretty dull.

I eventually picked the game up again when an eBay seller unloaded a bunch of PS4 copies for $12 in August. The game had been fully patched by then, so many of my issues were resolved. This time, though, I blazed through the game until I got off of Eos and into the more enjoyable planets. It felt like Dragon Age: Inquisition taught the folks at BioWare nothing! Eos was a cesspool of boredom and it’s no wonder so many people gave up within the first 10 hours.

I actually ended up loving the game this time. The cast grew on me and the ones I didn’t care for at first become some of my series favorites. Peebee and Jaal (who I affectionately referred to as PB&J) were my favorite pairing and possibly my favorite characters in the series. Movie Night was a great side-quest, the game’s combat was fantastic, and I loved being able to dip in and out of multiple classes instead of just choosing one at the start.

At launch I didn’t feel the PC game had many problems, but read about the consoles having a tough time. It’s a pretty demanding game though, but looks great in the end. The PC does have some annoying problems still like going into windowed mode randomly during dialogue and making me miss some of it as the audio mutes for a few seconds >.<

Seriously, EoS is dull. I went back to it and found the quests and everything about it so blah. All the other planets feel miles ahead of it. I was so surprised with how much I enjoy Voeld for instance. Havarl right now has my interest quite peaked.

I don't know who my favourite characters, PeeBee definitely is fun for her chatter, and I do love the bromance between Ryder and Jaal. I'm looking forward to the movie night quest, it sounds very chills and just all about building characters. As great as the combat is and power up your class is, my favourite part about Mass Effect is still finding new dialogue and quests from your crew after each major mission. Kickin' it back with the crew as I like to say.